glad to see you--my sister Ada and myself," Miss Kingston
said, shaking hands cordially with their visitor. "Lucy has been telling
us all about you; but we certainly expected, from what you had gone
through, that you were older."

"I am two or three years older than she is, Miss Kingston, and I have
gone through so much in the last three years that I feel older than I
am. She has told you, I hope, that she has been good enough to promise
to be my wife some day?"

"Yes, she has told us that, Mr. Wingfield; and although we don't know
you personally, we feel sure--my sister Ada and I--from what she has
told us of your behavior while you have been together, that you are an
honorable gentleman, and we hope and believe that you will make her
happy."

"I will do my best to do so," Vincent said earnestly. "As to my
circumstances, I shall, in another year, come into possession of estates
sufficient to keep her in every comfort."

"I have no doubt that that is all satisfactory, Mr. Wingfield, and that
her father will give his hearty approval when he hears all the
circumstances of the case. Now, if you will go into the next room, Mr.
Wingfield, I will call her down"--for Lucy had run upstairs when she
heard Vincent knock. "I dare say you will like a quiet talk together,"
she added, smiling, "for she tells me you have never been alone together
since you started."

Lucy required several calls before she came down. A new shyness, such as
she had never before felt, had seized her, and it was with flushed
cheeks and timid steps that she at last came downstairs, and it needed
an encouraging--"Go in, you silly child, your lover will not eat you,"
before she turned the handle and went into the room where Vincent was
expecting her.

Vincent had telegraphed from the first station at which he arrived
within the limits of the Confederacy to his mother, announcing his safe
arrival there, and asking her to send money to him at Antioch. Her
letter in reply reached him three days after his arrival. It contained
notes for the amount he wrote for; and while expressing her own and his
sisters' delight at hearing he had safely reached the limits of the
Confederacy, she expressed not a little surprise at the out-of-the-way
place to which he had requested the money to be sent.

"We have been examining the maps, my dear boy," she said, "and find that
it is seventy or eighty miles out of your direct course, and we have
puzzled ourselves in vain